by
Geoff Mann
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[...] The most fundamental problem with capitalism, and the reason it must be rejected, is that it is structured, in its very operation, to make it impossible for millions and even billions to be free in any meaningful sense. The critique of capitalism has little to do with how well it provides for the people of the world relative to what came before (feudalism, slave-plantations, etc.), or with a need to defend the disastrous attempts to resist it (Stalinist "communism", faux-socialist kleptocracy, etc.). Anticapitalism has to do, rather, with the fact that capitalism is not good enough. It is unacceptable.
connects with my thoughts on capitalism as this adolescent stage
[...] it is different from titles like An Introduction to Capitalism" or "Economics for Beginners" [...] they can lay out the "how it works" of capitalism as clearly as any Lego instruction manual. But they almost always substitute an account of how capital says the economy works, or ought to work, for an account of how it actually works. They introduce a whole set of mainstream, "business pages" concepts as if they are unquestionable, the only way to understand capitalism. Those of us driven by a sense that what capitalism offers is nowhere near good enough, and that we can and must create something better, will find little if anything to work with.
[...] It is not another shrill denunciation of capitalism. Those books often leave one feeling that capitalism is simply a massive class conspiracy, a monolithic force of evil for which only really nasty, cruel people could be responsible. It is as if capitalism happens to us, imposed by external trickery. But that is not true. Most of us actively participate in keeping capitalism going every day, and not always unwillingly. [...]
Perhaps the CEOs of Shell Oil or Citibank are indeed cruel profiteers and super-rich megalomaniacs. Perhaps they really are bad guys. That is not, and cannot be, the basis of a critique of capitalism. Capitalism is neither made nor defended by profiteers and super-rich megalomaniacs alone, nor did they produce the system that requires the structural position they fill. In reality, capitalism is produced and reproduced by elaborate, historically embedded, and powerful social and material relationships in which most us participate. In fact, many of us struggle to maintain those relationships, sometimes with all our might, because we feel like we have little choice. [...]
inspo for diss: cant just blame individual execs and investors etc but rather look at system
"We're good, you're evil" strategies can easily undermine mass solidarity, precisely because of those tricky everyday decisions people have to make. Barring a "clean slate" political solution, such as the revolutionary elimination of the "bad guys" (which history suggests is a risky route), I am convinced that the only basis for solidaristic anticapitalist politics is an analysis that makes sense of "complicity." We need an approach that comprehends the various positions and political dilemmas in which people find themselves, and helps them see that these dilemmas are neither inevitable nor necessary--that they can find what they need in different, better ways, through other ways of living and thinking.
The problem is not that capitalism is a conspiracy of greedy people. The problem is that capitalism, as a way of organizing our collective life, does its best to force us to be greedy—and if that is true, then finger-pointing at nasty CEOs and investment bankers may be morally satisfying, but fails to address the problem. We are aiming for more than a world with nicer hedge-fund managers.
Two premises follow from this. First, we need to understand capitalism in more than just a wishy-washy, general way. If we want to change it, whether by tweaking or reworking the whole economic fabric of society, we need fairly detailed knowledge of the how, why, what, who, and where. Second, while critical theories (like Marxism) have a lot to offer, it is just as important to seriously engage capitalist theories of the capitalist economy, the ideas that make up modern orthodox ("neoclassical") economics and political economy. In other words, we have to recognize that as capitalism has developed, it has done so in tandem with ideas of human society with which it makes sense of itself.
Without some understanding of modern economic thinking, we cannot understand capitalism, because we cannot understand the logic and analysis that justifies it, that orders its institutions and gives it the legitimacy that has helped it survive and thrive for so long. Capitalism is organized the way it is because of how capital understands the world—an understanding, we must admit, shared by millions of people all over the world. Capitalism is not maintained by mere violence and deception. If it were, it would be far less robust. It is also sustained by a set of institutions, techniques, and ideas about human affairs and social goals that, for many people in the wealthy world, are unquestionable, as natural as gravity. Critics of capitalism ignore or dismiss these ideas at their peril.
inspo:
- "We are aiming for more than a world with nicer hedge-fund managers." but for SV billionaries
- " it is just as important to seriously engage capitalist theories of the capitalist economy / we have to recognize that as capitalism has developed, it has done so in tandem with ideas of human society with which it makes sense of itself" but for how tech views itself and what that teaches us about how things work
[...] calling capitalism a "mode of production" highlights the fact that there are other, different ways of organizing the social relations of economic life. Feudalism, which preceded capitalism in much of Europe, was one in which economic activity was organized by coercive lord-vassal relations of tribute and protection (and varied widely in the places and times historians call "feudal"). Another mode of production existed as the authoritarian "state socialism" of the former Soviet Union, a mode that most people erroneously call "communism" (largely because those systems misidentified themselves, of course; few would willingly call themselves "authoritarian state socialists").
footnote 2 explains why the USSR was not state capitalism, as some like to argue
[...] Geoffrey Ingham has most effectively conceptualized the essentials as: (1) private enterprise for producing commodities, (2) market exchange, (3) a monetary system based on the production of bank-credit money, and (4) a distinction role for the state in relation to these features.
My interest in unionism—and more specifically unionism in a traditionally female occupation—undoubtedly had its roots in my own particular family history and my desires to recast that history. From my father I learned male union traditions, both noble and shortsighted. The railroad brotherhood gave him a route to dignity and an alternative to upward mobility, but the battles against technological change, an inept railroad management, and the dissolving fraternity of craftsmen inspired more bitterness than hope. His union culture also offered few resources for a revaluing of the contributions and power of those outside the white male craft brotherhood. In contrast, my mother operated in inclusive ways and seemed infinitely flexible in the face of political, social, and economic upheaval. Yet she found it difficult, if not impossible, to see her own work in a nonunion department store as worthy of romance and a living wage.
Was there a working-class institution that captured the best of these traditions? One that could lay claim to rights, provide a sense of identity and power to its members while granting the same to those outside its ranks? An institution to which I as a woman could belong? Perhaps only a union built by women could forge such a vision. What I found, however, was that history resists mythology, and that my desire to revise the work and union histories of my parents was not to be fulfilled in the ways I anticipated.
Waitressing reveals the deeply gendered expectations surrounding the world of work. In the theater of eating out, the waitress plays multiple parts, each reflecting a female role. To fulfill the emotional and fantasy needs of the male customer, she quickly learns the all-too-common scripts: scolding wife, doting mother, sexy mistress, or sweet, admiring daughter. Other customers, typically female, demand obsequious and excessive service—to compensate, perhaps, for the status denied them in other encounters. For once, they are not the servers but the ones being served.